Absolution
by laletrice
Summary: Three days after Boston, Gideon goes down and Hotch goes after him.


Three days after Boston, after the warehouse had blown _(wood and shingles and feet and hands; in the aftermath they had gaped at each other in the roaring silence of their stunned ears, shining gobbets of meat and gore all over the road, the sidewalks, all over each other)_ was when Gideon fell apart. On the day it happened he was enraged and quietly efficient, organizing the evidence against Adrian Bale into a neat and damning package for the DA's office. The second day had bled seamlessly into the first with Gideon in the same clothes, the same jacket smelling of cordite, meeting with the families of the dead agents and finally with that of the hostage. He'd had Morgan, wracked with survivor's guilt, in tow as he went from interrogation room to interrogation room, standing under the fire of eyes wet with tears and sharp with accusation. Gideon hadn't been the first to leave any of those meetings; they weren't over until the families made them over, no matter how long, how many questions. Jason Gideon had stood and answered them all, his back straight and his voice level, and though the words differed from family to family, person to person, they'd always taken the same shape in the end, whether they were met with shouts or curses or sobs.

I tried. I took my best guess. I was wrong.

The morning of the third day, Hotch paced his office, watching through the windows at agents passing through the hallway. At eleven he called Morgan, who hadn't heard from Gideon since the night before. At one he stopped calling Gideon's cell and started calling his home phone number. There was no answering machine, no voicemail, and after fifty rings he'd hung up and gotten his car keys.

"I'm out for lunch," he said to to the unit secretary, who was so used to seeing him with a sandwich at his desk that she did a small doubletake before she answered to his back, "Got it, Agent Hotchner."

It was a long drive to the edges of Georgetown. Hotch double-parked in front of Gideon's townhouse. The day was soft with spring, cool air tossing the young poplars that nodded in cement planters at regular intervals along the sidewalk. Sunshine warmed Hotch's back and between his shoulderblades as he climbed the stoop, digging through the pockets of his coat for the key he hadn't used in more than a year.

Inside the house was deathly quiet, and cold. Hotch felt a chill as he stepped over the threshold from sunlight into darkness, the click of the lock as he shut the front door making the hair prickle on the back of his neck. The foyer was almost bare -- a Persian rug, a picture of Stephen's Little League team -- and beyond it the living room was a mass of shadows, tall overflowing bookcases and drawn drapes and the nose-tickling smell of old paper and dust.

Hotch swallowed his sense of intrusion and moved inward until he saw Gideon, sitting in an armchair, his head bent. Closer, he could see that there was an open book on Gideon's lap, the leather of its cover soft and worn with age and use. The text on its pages ran right to left instead of left to right, thick black brushstrokes of unfamiliar letters covering the delicate leaves.

Gideon looked up at him as Hotch stood next to the chair and laid his hand on Gideon's shoulder. The familiar bulk and strength of the other man, his crooked grin, the knowing flash of his dark crow's eyes, were gone; he was shrunken, blank-faced and frail beneath Hotch's touch.

He turned his face to the wall as Hotch gently took the chumash from his hands, closed it, and laid it aside. Hotch shrugged out of his overcoat, then his suitcoat. He rolled his shirtsleeves to his elbows, then bent and put his arms around Gideon.

"Jason," he said, into the other man's neck. He felt the press of Gideon's jaw against his own, the sharp prickle of two days of beard, smelled the faint sour tang of sweat and salt. The wool of Gideon's sweater itched as Hotch dug his chin in and lifted.

Hotch had the advantage of three inches of height, but he had less breadth of shoulder and was down twenty pounds of muscle. He grunted with effort as he looped his arm around Gideon's waist and guided him towards the silent kitchen of the townhouse, staggering across the tiled floor until their knees banged against the cabinet below the sink.

There was light in here, a shaft from the uncurtained window turning the dust motes stirred by their passage into a glittering shower. Hotch, breathing hard, wiped his forearm against his face. Gideon leaned against the sink. He wasn't looking at Hotch; he looked up into the light, his face absent of everything. There were deep harsh lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth; his lower lip hung loose and trembling, like that of a tired horse.

Hotch bent around him and pulled the chrome faucet lever. A rush of water pattered into the sink, flashing in the sunlight. Hotch lifted Gideon's hands and shoved them under the stream.

"It's over," Hotch said. His voice was low, barely above a whisper, but his tone was savagely angry. "Listen to me. It is over, Jason, and it is done, and everything from here on out is just self-indulgence. Self-pity. And if it's sin you're concerned about, that is a sin."

Hotch turned Gideon's wrists and let the water play over his upturned palms. With his other hand he reached for the bottle of dish soap at the side of the sink. He tilted it awkwardly and squeezed until bubbles rose up in the rushing water.

The sweet flowery smell of the soap filled his nostrils as he rubbed his hands hard, painfully hard, against Gideon's, feeling the square shape of them, the blunt capable fingers, the soft skin and the prominent veins. Hotch scrubbed until the hands between his were warm and red, no longer lax but tense against his own, until the fingers interlaced with his in a grip that was tight enough to hurt.

Gideon's breath of relief was a bitter rush of air against his neck as the water ran clear again, and clean.


End file.
